


the waiting game

by moodyreindeer



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-08 15:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyreindeer/pseuds/moodyreindeer
Summary: Peter suffers a serious injury; everyone tries to keep it together.---In which May reflects, Ned worries, and Michelle meets Tony Stark.





	the waiting game

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't seen any iron man movies so if tony and pepper are out of character...my bad.

_michelle_

 

It starts the way most things with Peter Parker do - a crash, a bang, and the line goes dead.

Michelle jumps at the burst of static in her ear; Ned yelps, yanking the comm out and throwing it down beside his laptop.

“What the hell was that?” she demands, looking at the laptop screen. All the traffic cams displayed show no sign of disruption. They look a little _too_ serene.

Ned scrambles into action, typing frantically as he switches from the camera feeds to the suit’s vital signs.

“Peter?” Michelle presses the comm into her ear hard enough to hurt. It remains silent, turned into an useless piece of metal. She tosses it aside angrily, half-listening it bounce off the wall.

“His suit’s going off the charts,” Ned alerts her. “His heart rate is slowing, his brain activity is irregular and his spine is showing serious signs of blunt force trauma.”

Michelle lets out a swear that sounds close to a hiss, breathed out viciously through her teeth.

“Do you know where he is?” she asks, she crowds into his space, pressing in to read the computer screen.

Ned types some more, then points to a string of coordinates that comes up on the screen. “There.”

They take a bus to edge of downtown, jumping off and breaking into a sprint as soon as their feet touch the ground. Michelle pushes herself faster and faster, reveling in the burn of her lungs to distract herself from the worst case scenarios spinning around her head.

They find him crumpled beside a brick building on the corner of two popular streets in the manufacturing district.

Michelle looks down at him, savoring the burn in her chest as she struggles to breathe in the crisp night air. Her nails dig into her palms, stimulating pain to ebb away the panic.

Ned picks Peter up, slinging a limp arm across his shoulders and holding up around the waist.

“What do we do?” he asks, his voice shaking. He’s afraid and out of his depth, just as much as she.

Michelle gulps, blinking rapidly to keep the sting of tears at bay. This is a crisis - there is no room for panic here.

“We call Tony Stark,” she declares, sending the proclamation into the night air. It’s something their ragtag trio has never had to resort to before, but it sounds right. He has to see that his suit, while good at covering most bases, doesn’t protect Peter from everything - Peter could still die. If Michelle has to live with that, then so does Tony Stark.

Ned drags Peter to a nearby bus bench as Michelle lags behind, ringing Tony from the phone her shaky hands stole from Peter’s suit pocket.

It rings and rings and rings, combining with the pressure behind her eyes to make a headache. The force of it hammers her entire skull; her foot taps against pavement, trying to release the nervous energy pent up in her bones.

He answers on the fifth ring. “Shouldn’t you be asleep by now, kid?”

Michelle swallows around the cotton taste in her mouth. “This isn’t Peter,” she says. It seems like a good place to start, but she wouldn’t know - how do calls like this go?

He pauses. “Who are you, then? Why do you have his phone?” His tone is suspicious, bordering on accusatory.

Michelle tries to breathe out a steady breath; she fails. “Something happened during patrol; we think he slammed into a building or crashed or something. He needs help.”

Tony lets go of the fact she answered neither of his questions. “Where are you?”

She gives him the street of the bus bench, casting a wary glance around the surrounding buildings. She’s suddenly aware of the fact that whatever got Peter could still be lurking in a shadow somewhere, and the increasing wind chill does nothing to stop the goosebumps sprouting on her arms.

“Don’t. Move.” He hangs up, replaced by the dull sound of the dial tone.

Michelle moves to where Ned laid Peter out on the bench, face-down.

“What do you do for someone who took a brick wall to the spine?” Ned asks. “You wouldn’t lay them on their back, right?”

“Tony says he’s sending help.” His name feels foreign on her tongue. She’s never said his first name alone before, but she also thinks the situation is dire enough to call for a first-name basis.

Ned nods, a quick, jerky motion. “Good. That’s - that’s good.”

A sleek black car comes to a smooth stop in front of them soon after. The passenger window rolls down, showing off a disgruntled man in the driver’s seat. “Get in.”

Ned and Michelle awkwardly crawl into the backseat, carrying Peter’s slack body between them. The car jerks into motion before the door can finish closing, flinging Michelle into the seat hard enough to make her teeth rattle. She keeps her hands on Peter’s body to stop him from careening off the seat.

His head ends up in her lap; she takes his mask off to see his face, but the sight sends waves of nausea to the pit of her stomach. It looks like he could be sleeping - right at the edge of not waking up again.

Ned looks down at Peter’s head as it lolls with the motion of the car. Michelle keeps a hand buried in the hair at the base of his neck, trying to take comfort in the warmth there.

“Someone’s got to tell May,” Ned says solemnly.

 

_may_

 

She gets the call at a quarter after midnight.

“Peter?” she asks eagerly. “Are you all right?”

There are a myriad of other questions to ask, ranging from _why aren’t you home?_ to _when will you stop?_ But she’s learned by now to ask the question that’s most likely to get a satisfying answer.

A sharp sigh crackles on the other end. “Ms. Parker, this is Michelle Jones.”

“Why do you have Peter’s phone?” May is already climbing to her feet. She cradles the phone between her ear and shoulder as she moves to the kitchen, wrapping her hands around her keys. The name sounds familiar - Peter’s mentioned her before, May is sure of it. But she can’t recall her face; all she can see is Peter in that damn suit, burned or bloody or impaled somewhere.

“Something happened,” Michelle says slowly. “We’re on our way to the facility upstate.”

“Is Peter okay?” She shoves her feet into the nearest pair of shoes. Her arms feel detached from the rest of her as she tries to slip on her jacket.

“I don’t know,” Michelle confesses. She sounds small and _terrified_. May closes her eyes and takes a staggered breath, trying to remember this is another kid - Peter’s friend.

“I’m on my way,” May promises. “Sit tight when you get there, okay?”

“Okay.”

May stands in the middle of the room, jacket still gripped in shaky knuckles as she closes her eyes and tries to breathe. She tries to remember the circumstances are different; Ben hadn’t been protected by million dollars worth of tech. He didn’t have radioactive genes coursing through his veins. This isn’t two years ago.

But it feels exactly the same.

She pushes herself forward by thinking about Michelle, and how haunted her voice sounded over the phone. May will be _damned_ if she lets Tony Stark ruin another perfectly good teenager.

May plays a pop station on full blast the entire ride upstate. Normally the identical upbeat rhythm of the Top 40 grates her brain, but she’s thankful for the distraction as it threatens away any chance of the silence.

Despite the late hour, the building is lit in every visible room, a palace of radiation against the inky backdrop of night.

Security lets her through without much of a fight. Happy Hogan waits for her just inside the entrance, his face pulled taut with something akin to remorse.

Much of the building looks the same - sleek, modern, and obscenely bright with artificial light. She can’t keep track of the turns they take to the med bay, but it doesn’t matter - she doesn’t intend on walking out of here until Peter does.

She spots Michelle and Ned first, sitting anxiously in a hybrid of a waiting room. Their backs are straight and their hands are poised in their laps; Michelle’s reach up to tuck her hair behind her ears and smooth it back.

Tony Stark stands across from them, looking into a room with his hands tucked into his pockets. He’s still dressed in a pristine suit, looking like he could just as easily be going to a press conference at one in the morning. The sight of him makes her fist clench and blood boil, so she heads directly to the two kids.

“Are you two all right?” May asks. She tries to scrutinize them better up close - Michelle’s hands are shaking; Ned’s leg can’t keep still.

“Yeah,” they mumble, looking dejectedly behind her to what must be Peter’s room. She can’t bring herself to turn around. Not yet.

“Do your parents know where you are?” May asks next.

Ned clears his throat. “I was supposed to spend the night.”

May remembers a vague memory of saying yes to Peter when he asked if Ned could yesterday. She exhales and nods. “Okay. Michelle?”

Michelle looks off to the side, crossing her arms over her chest; her fingers tap a rapid, irregular pattern against her bicep. “I told my mom I was with a friend in the hospital,” she explains in a quiet voice. “I said I want to be with them when they’re discharged. She doesn’t expect me home until tomorrow afternoon.”

May wants to protest that Michelle should go home anyway, seek some comfort from a good night’s sleep in her own bed, but the grim, determined look she casts her way says that Michelle couldn’t be dragged away. So May just nods and gives a quiet word of acceptance, then turns around to face the window.

The room looks closer to a master bedroom than a hospital room. It’s elegantly decorated, if not a little cold - it looks straight from a home design magazine. But it doesn’t soften the image of Peter laying completely still in the middle of a ginormous bed, framed on either side by an army of machines. It hits her like a punch to the gut, swift and hard.

“There’s some empty rooms in the floor above us,” Tony tells her as she steps silently to his side. May can’t even look at him - if she does, she might scream or cry or punch him. Maybe even all three. “You’ll have full kitchen access, of course.”

There are a lot of things May wants to say to him - _was it worth it?_ surfaces first. Was recruiting him worth what’s in front of them now? _How could you?_ follows close behind, but the what’s left of the rational part of her knows Peter would found a way to clean the streets of Queens without help from Tony Stark.

May settles for what will have the easiest answer. “Tell me everything,” she demands in a voice half death, half misery.

“From what his tech support tell me, he rammed into the side of a building. He suffered severe blunt force trauma to his head and spine. He has a set of fractured ribs and some internal bruising.” Tony recites it all in a cool, detached tone; May wonders if it’s an act or if he can truly has Peter held at such a far distance.

“Has he woken up yet?”

Tony glances at her briefly. “No. The team of doctors I have looking at him say his body’s been overridden by his healing factor.”

“Meaning what?” May asks sharply.

“Think of it like a computer logging off to install updates. His body has shut down so that his sole physical focus can be healing.”

“When will he wake up?”

His breath hitches - a small sound, imperceptible if she wasn’t standing right next to him. “We don’t know. However long it takes for his body to recover.”

 

_ned_

 

May forces them to go to bed after the second round of doctors comes to check on Peter. She looks more exhausted than him or Michelle do, but the way May and Tony can’t move further than ten feet away from the window keeps Ned from saying anything on the matter.

He and Michelle shuffle onto the elevator. It’s huge, like everything else in the facility, but Ned still feels uneasy. Ever since Washington, he hasn’t been too trusting of elevators’ structural integrity.

Michelle slumps against the wall, tilting her head back.

Ned thinks back to first arriving, being swarmed by a med unit as soon as the car stopped. They lifted Peter onto a gurney and whisked him away. The guy who picked them up - Happy, if Ned remembers correctly - wouldn’t let them follow. He led them the long way around to the med bay.

Michelle hadn’t let go of the mask until a nurse pried it from her hands.

“We’ll take good care of it, okay?” The nurse had tried for a smile, but neither he nor Michelle had been in the mood to be talked down to.

“He’s gonna be fine, right?” Ned blurts out. He needs something to burst the bubble of tension pressing down on them.

Michelle closes her eyes. Her head shakes side to side limply. “I don’t know, Ned.”

He knows the last thing he should want right is to be spoon fed false hope, but the truth makes his stomach roll.

The entire floor is made up of empty rooms, all identical and void of any personal touches.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Michelle promises, then slips into her room. He hears the small _snick_ as the lock snaps shut.

Ned enters his own room, then leans against the closed door wearily. Any other time this would be a dream come true; he would jumping around the room, running his hands over anything in sight because _holy fuck, he’s in the Avengers Headquarters!_

But any sense of starstruck has been stomped out by the weight of his best friend just a floor beneath him, hooked up to a bunch of machines and barely breathing.

When Ned thinks _superhero_ , he thinks fame and glory and invincibility. Even after finding out about Peter and his powers, it was difficult to put the two concepts together: his best friend since childhood and heroism. Even after the suit, the powers, the Vulture - it didn’t come together like it should.

But now it hits him hard. Whether it be the nausea or the shock, Ned feels the force of the night hard enough to double over. He sinks onto the bed and stares at the floor, his eyes stinging as his vision begins to swim. He hasn’t cried since his grandfather passed away.

Ned shucks off his jacket, toes off his shoes. He climbs underneath the soft covers and tries to conjure sleep.

He tosses and turns, itchy in his jeans and restrained in the material of his shirt. The room switches from being stifling hot to blistering cold; sweat rolls down the back of his neck and freezes seconds later.

After a pitiful hour of restlessness, Ned kicks off the blanket and swings out of bed. He flicks on the lamp and shuffles around the room. He finds a few books in the desk - an essay on the theory of radioactive evolution and a manual for the controls in the shower. Idly he wonders if every room is stocked with such reading material or if it was left by the last person who used this room.

Ned returns to the bed and flicks on the TV, flipping until he comes on a rerun of _Friends_. He keeps the volume low, even though the room is probably soundproof.

He thinks about Michelle in the next room. He wonders if she was able to fall asleep or if she wanders her room in the same listless fashion as he.

When he and Peter discovered Michelle knew about Peter’s identity, he hadn’t known what to think. She’d known for months, so she wasn’t a snitch. He hadn’t expected her to demand to help, showing up at Peter’s apartment with her arms crossed and a stubborn look fixed across her face.

“You need me,” she said, matter-of-fact. Her tone left no room for argument, and he and Peter had never been great at saying no, anyway. She turned out to be a surprisingly quick learner with computer, and knew all the corners of Queens that were the most likely places for criminal activity.

“She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” Peter praised in awe after a successful afternoon patrol. He’d kept his eyes on Michelle’s back as she left, a soft, dreamy kind of look Ned only saw when Peter looked at Liz.

It hadn’t been clear until now that Michelle felt something in return. Ned can’t get the utterly lost look she had in the car out of his head; the shaking grip she had on his mask is seared into his brain.

It would be a shame for Peter to die without knowing he has the girl, Ned thinks. Then he attempts to physically shake the thoughts from his head because Peter _isn’t_ going to die.

He can’t die. It would be too unfair of a thing to happen; first his uncle Ben, then him? Ned knows the world is capable of awful things, but putting that on Peter and May is too cruel.

Finally, he can’t stand it. Ned doesn’t even bother with putting his shoes back or turning off the TV. He creeps to the elevator and goes to see Peter.

May and Tony Stark are nowhere in sight when Ned returns. He expects to see one of them in the room with Peter, but there’s only a doctor he vaguely recognizes from hours before, writing things down on a chart as he stands over Peter. Ned waits respectfully outside the window, twiddling his thumbs.

The doctor greets him on his way out. “Hello again.”

Ned shakes his hand and gives a short nod. “How is he?”

“His vitals are stable and resting heart rate is rising back toward where it should be, which are all good signs.”

“Do you think he’ll wake up soon?” Ned can’t help but ask.

The doctor lowers his eyes in a look of patronizing pity. “So early in the process, it’s hard to say. But there is a definite sign of improvement, which can only mean good things.”

“It’s okay if I go in and see him, right?”

The doctor nods. “Of course, of course.” He squeezes Ned’s shoulder as he begins down the hall. Ned gets his hand on the doorknob as the doctor turns around to add, “comatose patients still have working auditory senses, so you can talk to him if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” Ned says gratefully. The doctor gives one last wave, then disappears around the corner.

Ned takes the seat on Peter’s right side. He tries to pretend that it isn’t a heart monitor stationed by his arm, but monotonous beep pelts his brain.

“Hey, Peter,” Ned says casually. As if they just found each other before homeroom. As if they were heading out for pizza. As if they weren’t in the med bay of the Avengers headquarters and Peter didn’t look dead.

“Next week’s going to be busy, man. Midterms and stuff, you know. And our Spanish test? Has an oral _and_ essay. Ridiculous, right? And Senora Rodriguez says it’s going to be fifteen percent of our final grade. I know that’s not _a lot_ , but I haven’t been doing too good on the conjugation tests she likes to give.”

Ned wipes his hands on his thighs. “And you promised that you’d study with me, remember? So you have to wake up to do that, Peter. Okay?”

 

_tony_

 

Pepper finds him hiding out in the lab. He’s ditched his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Peter’s suit is laid out in front of him, stripped apart.

“Tony?” Pepper stands in the doorway, eyebrows raised primly. “What are you doing?”

“I’m installing an air bag in this damn thing,” he says around the pliers in his teeth. He pulls the polymer finish back, exposing the slim panel of wires underneath.

Distantly, he hears the click of Pepper’s heels against the floor as she joins him. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says, slipping a hand onto his shoulder.

“Waterproof, fireproof, bulletproof,” he lists as he twists wires upwards, creating a pocket for the air bag. “But not brickproof. How could I have forgotten that?”

“You should see him,” Pepper suggests. “He looks good.”

“I have to finish this.”

All he can think of is Charles Spencer and his ruined mother, and how he’ll be damned if he lets another brilliant mind’s life be ended by another building.

“Take a break.” Pepper stands behind him and smooths her hands down his shoulders to grip his arms. “It’s three in the morning. Peter would understand sleeping.”

“You pulled that card fast.” Tony drops the pliers, dropping his head into his hands. “That kid _cannot_ die.”

“He won’t. He’s strong, just like his aunt.”

“I’m not even attempting to sleep until he wakes up,” Tony mutters into his hands.

Pepper sighs above him. “I know. Just don’t overwork yourself down here. Being cooped up and stressed isn’t going to help anyone.”

She kisses him, quick and sure, before leaving him alone again. Tony blinks, trying to deny his vision as it blurs at the edges. He dislodges the entire panel, severing it from the suit and setting it aside. It clatters onto the table; his hands haven’t been steady for an hour.

His mind moves between Peter and May. He can’t stop thinking of seeing Peter wheeled through the medical unit, ashen and slack amongst the bustling emergency team; he can’t stop seeing the distraught blankness of May’s face as looked through the window to her comatose nephew.

Tony has seen worse injuries; he’s _had_ worse injuries, and lived to see a better day. But he’s done enough things to last several lifetimes, and this is a fifteen year old kid. He hasn’t even capped his sophomore year of high school, for God’s sake. Peter hasn’t seen everything he’s meant to - he hasn’t gone all the places and done all the things that he was meant to, and he might never get that chance. Whether it be because his body never comes out of its coma state or he simply dies, Peter will be robbed of his right to live and it will be another ghost buoyed to Tony’s conscious.

He stands abruptly, pushing himself away from the table. He doesn’t think about where he’s going until he’s halfway there, exiting the elevator and turning left to the kitchen. He hasn’t had an appetite for hours, but he needs something in his system to settle his nerves.

The kitchen isn’t empty. Michelle Jones sits at the counter, her hands laced around a mug of tea, staring at nothing as her fingers tap out a senseless rhythm against the painted ceramic.

“Do you suffer some insomnia, too, or is just nerves?” he asks.

Michelle sips from her mug. “I have a weird sleep schedule. Ever since I started helping Peter with everything, I’ve gotten used to waking up in the middle of the night.”

“Nightmares?” Tony asks.

She meets his eyes. “Not my own.”

Tony feels more surprised than he should. Of course the kid has nightmares; it comes with the territory, along with a general distrust of unknown things and a sense of unease from innocuous places. But Tony liked to think that Peter has managed to escape it all because he hadn’t been telling him about them. Egocentric, he knows, but also some naive hope that Peter would turn out better than the rest of them.

But even if Peter can’t come to him, it’s good that he’s going to someone.

“Captain of the decathlon team, public equal rights activist, daughter of a world-renowned neurosurgeon, top of your class, on track for Ivy League school,” he lists casually as he refills the tea kettle. “That’s quite the reputation.”

“So you gathered intel on me?” Michelle accuses. She doesn’t sound offended, but she narrows her eyes at him, calculating. “Do you do that for all of Peter’s friends or am I just a special case?”

“Friends? Is that what the kids are calling it now?”

Michelle huffs, unimpressed. “You’re pretty nosy for a billionaire mentor.”

“I’m taking an interest in his life,” Tony insists. He feels defensive, as if this is May or Pepper and not a teenage girl he’s never met before.

“Interesting,” Michelle repeats into her mug. “That’s one word for it.”

Tony scowls at her, dropping any civil pretense he tried to maintain. “Do you have a bone to pick with me or are you in that teenage stage where you have to be jackass to everybody?”

Michelle stares at him long and hard. She looks exhausted, shadows beneath her eyes and her shoulders slouched forward, but her eyes are sharp and alert. Tony sees Pepper get that look when it’s late and he’s woken her up all the way down in the lab and her patience for him has worn thin. It’s the look of someone who is strong because they don’t know any other way to be.

In this moment, Tony gets why Peter likes her so much.

“I understand that Peter got his powers long before you gave him the suit,” Michelle starts, her voice low, “and that he would be fighting for the little guy whether you stepped in or not. But I can’t ignore the fact that you give him this suit and aren’t even around to see him use it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, but he thinks he already knows where she’s going.

Michelle purses her lips. “You left him here. A stubborn kid with superpowers and no sense of self-preservation and you left him _alone_. I know the suit is your way of clearing your conscious and keeping him safe, but it isn’t you.” She drops her head and breathes in through her nose.

“He wants you here,” she continues. “He wants more than phone calls with Happy and the occasional suit update. He wants you to see what he’s doing and be proud of him.”

The unspoken _like a father_ hangs in the air between them.

Tony grips the counter in both knuckles. “He told you all of this?”

Michelle shrugs. “Some of it. I can be really observant when I want to be.” She takes another sip of her tea. “But what does it matter? You’re never going to hold him closer than arm’s length, right? It’s not like you’re going to change your entire life for a smart kid from Queens you only met a year ago.”

Behind him the kettle hisses to announce the water’s ready. He ignores it, letting the high-pitched whine hammer on his head in harmony with Michelle’s words.

Everything she said she was true. Of course he knows that Peter wants him to see what he can do; it’s what Tony wanted with his own father when he was Peter’s age. But the closer Tony gets to people, the harder it gets to keep them safe. Peter already has a target on his back by swinging around the city as a solo act. The last thing he needs in his life is to be something Tony Stark cannot afford to lose.

Slowly, Tony puts his back to Michelle. He takes the kettle off the stove and switches the burner off. He doesn’t reach for a mug in the cupboard; he keeps looking at the blue paint on the kettle, trying to keep his breathing steady.

“Since you’re so high and mighty,” he musters finally, “what do you suggest I do?”

Tony still keeps his back to her, but he can feel her gaze burning a spot between his shoulder blades.

“Do something about this time,” Michelle says evenly, “before there’s a next time he doesn’t wake up from.”

He hears the squeal of the stool legs across the tiled floor as she gets up from her seat, but he doesn’t turn to see her go. He has a feeling she’s not going back to her room.

There were so many things wrong with Tony and his father that it swore him off of kids for good; he was sure that whatever fucked up his own relationship with his father would be genetically passed down to him, and he had no desire to see it replicated with his own son. But then this reckless kid with a habit of stumbling into bad luck comes out of nowhere, and Tony gets desperate enough to drag him into a war he has no place being in. He knew that as soon as he went into that apartment he was signing up for something he would never really get out of, and he did it anyway.

Until now, with Peter’s comatose body lying only a few corridors away, Tony had convinced himself that he could keep the kid at a distance and it would be better for both of them.

But it’s always taken a tragedy to show him he was wrong.

 

_michelle_

 

Telling off Tony Stark does nothing to lift the weight that has settled on her chest.

It pulls her down with every step, combining with her tea’s sleepy affect to make her feel as if she’s drowning.

She struggles to Peter’s room, dragging her feet with every step.

When she last went by his room, Ned’s voice floated out the open door, babbling about inane things like school and Legos and the movies coming out next month. Ned hadn’t lifted his eyes from Peter once, and Michelle left him alone, giving them their privacy.

Now Ned is gone, but the door is open - ajar, letting the steady beat of the heart monitor float into the hallway.

Michelle pauses outside the window, drinking in the sight. The lack of suit makes it worse somehow; he looks smaller. Dollike, almost. Only five hours ago he had been energetic and happy and alive. Then he slammed into a damn brick wall and nearly got himself killed.

 _And for what?_ she thinks bitterly, because she’s angry at him, too. What had he been chasing that she and Ned didn’t see that led him to that place at that time? Why does he have to do this at all? Does he really think so little of his own life?

Maybe she’s being unfair - to Peter and Tony, as well - but she’s never had any experiences with death before, and the fact that the first close-call happened so close to home strikes a chord. She is worried, but there is room for anger. Her body can’t decide if it wants to scream or vomit.

Michelle quits stewing long enough to slip inside and close the door behind her.

The room is freezing; goosebumps sprout on her arms as she settles into the chair beside his heart monitor. She shifts, trying to get comfortable, but the padding is thin and the fabric is scratchy against her skin. She finally settles on slouching, stretching her legs out beneath the bed and propping her elbows on the arm rests.

She scans Peter’s face. If she stares hard enough, Michelle thinks she can see his eyes move underneath his eyelids. If he can hear her, it makes sense that he can dream, too.

“You’re not allowed to die,” she tells him sternly. “Not now, not ever.”

Michelle thinks about saying more than that, but she thinks that gets her point across well enough.

Wearily, she looks to the door. It must be nearing four in the morning by now; only a few more hours until the sun rises and she’s forced to face this in the daylight. But the trek back to her room seems like a long and impossible feat from where she’s sitting.

Peter’s bed is closer. And almost entirely free on one side.

Careful to keep the chair from creaking, Michelle gets up and walks to Peter’s left side. She pulls back the sheets and tucks herself in.

The weight of the night crowds her. She huddles close, wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face in the soft cotton of his plain tee. She closes her eyes and hones in on the steady rise and fall of his chest. Her breathing slows as her eyelids begin to droop, but she doesn’t remember falling asleep until the touch of a hand on the small of her back startles her awake.

“Just me,” comes a hoarse whisper above her.

Michelle cranes her neck to see Peter looking down at her, eyebrows quirked bemusedly as his fingers skim her sides.

“Good morning,” he greets in the same gentle rasp.

Michelle sits up, glancing toward the window. Early morning sunlight streams in, contrasting the ugly artificial light that still shines above them.

“Have you been awake for long?” she asks him, scrutinizing him carefully.

Peter shrugs. He seems fine, if not a little stiff. His face is still a worrisome shade of grey, but the his cheeks are gradually turning warmer.

“I’ve kinda been waking up on and off the past hour or so,” he explains. He seems to finally sense that he’s in unfamiliar territory; he looks around the room. “Where are we?”

“What do you remember?” Michelle asks.

His face scrunches with thought. “Nightly patrol...saw a guy with a gun in his waistband get in his car and drive away. I think - I followed him to the manufacturing district, didn’t I?” His hand snakes out from behind him to run down the length of his torso. Almost conversationally, he asks, “was I shot?”

“No, you weren’t _shot_ ,” Michelle answers tersely. “But you did bruise your spine and cause internal bleeding. We had to bring you to the Avengers facility.”

“You called Tony?” Peter asks.

“Yeah. And your aunt.”

Peter settles into his pillow, staring ahead thoughtfully. He doesn’t seem concerned with the extent of his injuries. Michelle wonders if it’s because he doesn’t feel the pain of them or that he isn’t concerned with the thought of dying.

“You’re still here,” he comments after she relaxes enough to sink back into his side.

“Ned’s here, too,” she mumbles into his shoulder. She’s already beginning to feel sleepy again.

“And you’re right _here_.” Peter tucks his arm back around her waist; her breath hitches as his fingers press underneath her ribs delicately.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asks, making no move to unravel from her spot.

His grip on her tightens. “No.” His face turns and plants itself into her hair. “Were you scared for me?”

“Terrified,” she answers quietly. The truth of it pulls hard at her gut. “I yelled at Tony Stark."

Peter huffs. “He probably deserved it.”

Michelle nods her assent and turns her body until she faces him completely.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers into her hair. Michelle’s eyelids flutter as he presses his lips into the crown of her head.

“The doctor needs to know you’re up,” Michelle says, only half-awake.

Peter laughs quietly. “I’ll get him. Go to sleep, you’re exhausted.”

“Okay,” she agrees quietly.

Michelle fights it long enough to see Peter press the call button to make sure a doctor is on their way. When Peter turns on the TV and begins flipping through the channels, she allows herself to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hey on my [tumblr](http://spideypetes.tumblr.com).
> 
> like my writing? buy my first book [here!](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983447617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531446109&sr=8-1&keywords=women+of+questionable+morals)


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